The significance of Yarloop

Close to home!

when I read the subject I for some reason thought of my dad, Noel Stanley Blegg.

When Noel was 19 he was called to be a minister, so left his parents and the rest of the family in Tasmania and went to Melbourne to study for what he believed would be his life’s work and calling. He travelled from Hobart to Launceston to board the boat to take him across Bass Strait , on board with him were  his 2 mates Milford and Robert also travelling for the same reason.
After his study was concluded and he was ordained, he thought he may be sent back to Tasmania, but to his surprise he was told he was going to Yarloop in Western Australia. He knew nothing about the place he had never heard of it, he found it wasn’t a suburb of Perth and he would have another train journey to Yarloop a timber cutting town in the south of WA .  Traveling on the same train was another minister also going to the same part of the country also going to Yarloop.
Noel had been given the address of the house he would be living in, when he arrived it was a shed in the back yard of an old house with 2 bunks, a sink, and a small wood burning stove to cook on. It was January and really hot, and by the time they arrived it was rather late, but Noel and Wally were hungry and knew they had to find something to eat, they found some wood and set the fire in the stove, and the only food they found was rice, which Noel really liked, so that would do for tonight, they put some water in a big pan and threw in some of the jar of rice, they both decide that not having eaten since breakfast they thought they might need some more rice to eat so put in the rest of the jar, the rice quickly swelled, to they took some out and added more water, they did this 3 times they had half cooked rice in everything, so when the first lot was cooked they had some to eat, and then had to finish cooking the rest, fortunately they both liked rice so ate it for the next 3 days, plain and with milk and sugar for breakfast! Noel always loved rice, after hearing this story we wondered how he could still eat it!
For the time Noel was at Yarloop he held the church services out at the logging camp in a bag hut but mostly he said outside the bag hut, for music he played a trumpet given to him by his father many years earlier, that trumpet was passed on to one of his grandchildren many years later.

A few years later Noel married and when he was in any of the eastern states when ever  dad and mum had holidays long enough they would drive to Western Australia and they always went to Yarloop.

After they retired and came across to spend some time with us we of course went to Yarloop.
On one of these holidays we found the shed that dad had lived in and worked from, it was his office as well and everything else. It was very small to be called a house, but as most of the loggers with their families lived under canvas perhaps what they had  was better.

In week 5 of 2020 I wrote about my father at Yarloop in WA this is a little more about it.

DAD AT YARLOOP

Before I was born, or mum had even met dad,

Noel lived at Yarloop, near where they chopped wood,

He owned a bicycle a rickety thing, 

but it got him around, with no gears and no springs! 

Sometimes when he rode it he ached with the cold

He had to start early for the mill he was bound,

He was told that the way to keep out the cold wind

Was to wrap up in newspaper put it next o your skin!

So although he rustled as he peddled along

He was much warmer and he’d get there on time,

In an old leather case with a handle worn thin

Was an old silver cornet with a dent in the bell,

For his cornet he told me had come from a shop 

Where the owner had pawned it and never gone back,

It was slick and ‘‘twas silver and he made it shine,

And for 50 odd years that cornet played fine,

But it never played better than it did at Yarloop 

That tiny small place in the West and down south,

The parents were happy the kids came along

To hear stories of Jesus and sing happy songs

When Noel played to the kids in the hessians bag hut

From the photo I’ve seen the kids lapped it up,

The old man he wondered where are they today ?

Those who for a short while stopped in their play

To hear a young fella play his cornet for them,

And then turn his push bike back home once again. 

Heather Denholm aka Bleggy

Written before 2012 revised August 2020. 

 This was written partly because dad loved Yarloop in southern Western Australia, and he died the same day that the town of Yarloop burned to the ground. Dads ashes were actually scattered in Tasmania.

This was also written for a competition and the words I had to use were “His footsteps slowed as he walked the road.”

Dad visiting yarloop

His footsteps slowed as he walked the road

When dad was quite young he had just begun to preach and to visit his flock

Yarloop was his first it was close to his heart ‘twas a place to him meant quite a lot

His church was all bags, a hut in the Bush where he preached to an overflow crowd

Then when he retired he’d visit the town tell of weddings or folk he had buried

I never told dad  that Yarloop was no more That the place that he loved was in ashes

For in Ballarat on that day my dad passed away his will said in Yarloop  spread his ashes

So we sprinkle dads ashes in the soot of Yarloop And someone beside me is walking

For his footsteps slowed as he walked the road It was dad and to God he was talking.

Bleggy 2018